INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
If you’ve ever tried buying a bike online, or ski equipment, or any number of expensive goods where it would be useful to know a lot more
than you do, you might check out Curated, a two-year-old San Francisco-based startup that wants to help busy shoppers who know generally
what they want but don’t necessarily have time to visit a specialty store to learn more.It isn’t the first startup to help with shopping
Among its predecessors is Hunch, a company that delivered customized recommendations to users based on signals around the web (and sold to
Another variation on the same theme can be traced back to the dot com era company Keen.com, a live answer community where people could get
answers to their questions over the phone.Still, Curated makes enough sense in today’s market that Forerunner Ventures, which has
established a name for itself as the preeminent investor in e-commerce companies, just led its $22 million Series A round
It was the only venture firm in the round by design, says cofounder and CEO Eddie Vivas, who says the funding was filled out by the same
friends and family who’d participated in Curated’s $5.5 million seed round.As part of the deal, Forerunner founder Kirsten Green has
also joined the board.It’s easy to appreciate the company’s appeal
Curated works by matching bewildered shoppers with people who are passionate and knowledgeable and “expert” in their fields
Right now, those experts are mostly athletes or coaches, as the platform is starting out with a handful of verticals, including golf,
cycling, and a few winter sports
Longer term, the idea is to launch new sections on the site every six to eight weeks, including fly fishing, kiteboarding, camping and
hiking.How the economics work: Curated strikes deals with manufacturers — say makers of snowboard equipment or mountain bikes — that
sell Curated their goods at wholesale prices
Curated can then sell them at retail prices to its customers
(Curated fulfills the order itself.)Part of that markup is used to pay its experts, who tend to be people who have jobs in related fields
but could use more income and who love sharing what they know about a topic
To ensure that these experts know as much as they claim, they are vetted by other experts on the platform, answering a battery of questions
as part of that process.Vivas stresses that experts are in no way incentivized to recommend anything in particular to a customer, but he
says customers can tip the experts if they wish
(Curated suggests tips of 5%, 7.5%, or 10%, and Vivas says they are sometimes given much more than that by shoppers who are thankful for
their time and effort, especially when their interactions end up leading them to products that cost less than they might have paid
otherwise.)The end goal is for customers to complete transactions on the platform that they wouldn’t otherwise feel comfortable completing
at a site where they aren’t actively educated.The platform is seizing on a number of trends that make it a smart idea for this day and age
For one thing, it uses artificial intelligence to connect shoppers with the right advisors
Though everyone tosses around AI as a competitive advantage, Curated seemingly has a genuine competitive advantage on this front, owing to
the background of Vivas, who sold to LinkedIn an earlier company that used AI to automate the recruiting process.At the time, in 2014, it
was LinkedIn’s biggest acquisition ever
And Vivas stayed at LinkedIn for another 3.5 years as the head of product within its talent solutions business, which is where LinkedIn
derives most of its revenue
(In fact, it’s where he met some of the 32 people who now work at Curated.)Curated is also putting to work far-flung knowledge workers
who, like a lot of Americans, increasingly work for themselves or in part-time roles that they’re looking to supplement with other
part-time roles.But perhaps most meaningfully, Curated is a kind of antidote to Amazon, where shoppers can turn when they need something
fast but that’s incredibly limited when it comes to providing the kind of information needed to comfortably make big purchases
Consumers may pull the trigger on items anyway, but often, they end up with merchandise that they then have to send back or never wind up
using.The question now is whether the company can scale
To do so, it’ll need to rise above the din of other e-commerce platforms to attract enough customers to support its network of experts
(and vice versa), and it’s a pretty crowded landscape out there, even with the magic of search-engine optimization and Facebook
ads.Curated will also need to strike enough deals with goods manufacturers to make the platform compelling for shoppers, and to ensure that
the level of the advice that’s provided to those consumers is, and remains, high.Perhaps unsurprisingly, Vivas doesn’t sound concerned
He thinks he’s built a strong team
He’s also excited about the growing network of experts the team has pieced together since founding the company in the summer of
2017.“You take someone who is passionate about something and you let them make money off it, and good things happen,” he says.“In
allowing people to monetize their knowledge, the unlock is just unbelievable.”Time will tell
The service launches publicly today.
